CRUMBRIA: 14.3.2026
THE Tim Farron Fan Club (President: T. Farron) has chalked up another by-election win in Cumbria.
This time on Wokemoreland & Farcical Council, already controlled by a Lib Dem-dictatorship, which hold 36 of the 65 seats.
Turn out in Thursday’s by-election for Penrith South was a “piss poor” 23%.
The Lib Dem candidate won with 749 votes, Reform got 588, the Greens 225, and the Tories a mere 173.
But the big story was not the Lib Dem winning at all. It was Labour’s complete failure to put anybody up for election.
What? No Labour?
Given Penrith & Solway is represented in Parliament by Labour MP, Martyr Campbell-Savours, it seems absurd that, less than two years after taking the seat off the Tories by more than 5,000 votes, Labour could not even find a name to put on the ballot paper for a Penrith ward.
Despite our leg-pulling, £98,000-a-year Martyr is a good egg locally when party politics is not interfering with his judgement.
So what happened?
Could it be that Keirnocchio and Labour are now so unpopular that the party in Penrith didn’t want to risk a drubbing?
Or has it simply decided that Wokemoreland & Farcical Council is the Lib Dems to keep?
Perhaps our local comics could make a few enquiries?
It’s screamingly obvious, of course, but the sooner the Labour Party nationally returns to the one that we recognise, the quicker their vote share might improve.
The Lib Dems, meanwhile, have again shown that people aren’t going to roll out the red carpet for Reform, especially in places like Penrith.
Racking up likes for angry comments online is one thing. Getting actual voters off their arses into a polling station is quite another.
And what of the Tories sinking to bottom in Penrith? The old Penrith & the Border seat was once held for decades by old oyster-eyes, Willie Whitelaw, right-hand man to Mrs Thatch.
It is, however, another useful reminder that political parties taking their base for granted tend to find eventually that the base has moved on for greener pastures, or yellower ones if you vote Lib Dem.
Jonathan Davies, owner of Penrith Town News and leader of political party, Cumbria First, points out that 5,658 people in the by-election didn’t vote.
In the current age of political rabies, that’s maybe the most remarkable result of this most recent Council by-election.
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